1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of interfaces between humans and machines, and more particularly to methods and apparatus for facilitating communication between a user and one or more devices which are remote from the user.
2. Background
Over the past several decades there has been a widespread adoption by consumers of various types and pieces of electronic entertainment equipment. Devices such as televisions (TV), set-top boxes, radio receivers, video cassette recorders (VCR), compact disk (CD) players, digital versatile disk (DVD) players, and similar consumer electronic devices have become common in many households.
Many of these modem consumer electronic devices are designed to be operable by remote control. In the earliest versions of remotely controlled consumer electronic devices, a wired connection between the device, a TV for example, and a hand-held control unit was provided. Although the hand-held control unit was remote from the device under control, in this case a TV, it was nonetheless cumbersome and undesirable to have a wire between the two. In view of this disadvantage, hand-held control units were subsequently developed which possessed a wireless link to the consumer electronic device which they controlled. Although any suitable wireless communication link may be used between a device and its corresponding remote control unit, such links are most commonly implemented today by way of an infra-red transmitter and receiver.
Over time consumers tended to acquire a greater number of entertainment devices, each individually operable by remote control. These collections of entertainment devices were often aggregated in a single area of a room, and such an aggregation may be, but is not required to be, referred to as an entertainment center. A disadvantage of such an arrangement is that the user was then required to handle several different remote control devices in order to operate the various components in the entertainment center. For example, in an entertainment center which comprised an aggregation of a TV, set-top box, and CD player, there was also a remote control for the TV, a remote control for the set-top box, and a remote control for a compact disk player, and each of these separate remote controls would need to be used to operate the entertainment center.
In order to overcome the undesirable situation of having many remote control units to properly control an aggregation of individually controllable electronic devices, a more advanced form of hand-held remote control unit was developed. These more advanced remote control units were each capable of operating more than one electronic device. Such remote control units are typically referred to as universal remote controls.
Universal remote controls may be programmed to transmit the control codes recognized by two or more pieces of electronic equipment. However, since many functions, such as for example, “Power-On” or Power-Off, are shared by each of the several devices to be controlled, the universal remote control units are typically provided with buttons that are used to select which one of the two or more of control codes (each recognized by a particular piece of equipment) is to be transmitted by the universal remote control.
What is needed is a universal remote control unit that provides an easy to operate interface with the user.